Blog by Alex Deve – all those ideas are mine and just mine. Blame me for it. Nobody else.

Mezes, San Francisco

On Saturday, we spent most of the day without eating. I know, it sounds crazy, but sometimes, those things happen. We don’t even know why. But by 4pm, we were like: oh oh, we need food.

Let’s put it this way – being very hungry at 4pm on a saturday opens lot of opportunities. You can basically go to any restaurant when they open without booking. On saturday, we decided to go Mezes, in the Marina, at Chesnuts and Divisadero, in San Francisco. We’ve been there a few times in the past, always a nice experience, nothing that made me go “wouah!”.

It’s a Greek restaurant. And yes, my wife is Greek… I let you connect the dots… Last time I had Greek food was for our wedding last summer. Since then, nada.

I let her order, even though i had a couple of requests, one of them being the traditional greek salad. If a restaurant doesn’t have a good salad, it’s a bad sign for what’s next.

The salad arrived, and I was very surprised. Perfectly dressed, very nice feta, thinly sliced onions, and green pepper, it was really nice. Then came the surprise of the evening: mussels in Ouzo & cream. That was by far the best mussels I ever had. I gave back an extra clean plate. The tastes in that dish were just so incredible. Cervil, cream, ouzo, onions. Very basic, but what a combination. I’m definitely going to try to make the same at home. If anyone has some more info about that recipe, don’t hesitate to comment on this blog!

The rest of the meal was great. Stuffed calamari, Prawns in cream and ouzo (again!) and grilled octopus. Very traditional, very Greek. Which is why we loved that place. The service (by a Greek waiter) was impeccable, and even extremely nice and professional.

It may sound weird, and I don’t know if this is because I was so hungry, but this was one of the top 3 meals in the last 6 months of my life. Would I go back there? Absolutely. And I will order those mussels!